I’ve been thinking about Mithras and Mithra, Roman and Persian. Some of the comments on my recent post, Why Cumontian Mithras studies are dead, suggested that Roman syncretism could not be left out of account, and that any eastern cult that entered the Roman world was likely to undergo modification.

There is much truth in this. We all remember the Indian gurus who competed for custom among the hippies with westernised versions of their teachings. The Hare Krishnas come rather readily to mind. A couple of generations earlier, we find eastern Fakirs in Edwardian drawing rooms. But then again, all this is rather vague. How do we know what happened?

I started thinking about an obvious contender for this syncretism and assimilation: the Egyptian cult of Isis. Isis is an ancient Egyptian goddess, part of the pantheon together with Ra and Osiris and Horus and the rest. Yet there were temples of Isis in Rome itself, and elsewhere in the empire. Surely this would be an excellent candidate cult for examination? After all, we can learn a lot about the pre-Graeco-Roman cult from Ancient Egyptian texts and inscriptions; and then we have a goodish amount of material from the Roman period.

So thinking, I naturally wanted to know just what the data base for the cult of Isis in the Roman world was. And … there I started to get stuck.

I wanted to know who the scholars are that one should read. There is, no doubt, much dross and hearsay out there. Indeed it took only one click on a Google search to find a book about “Isis and Early Christianity” or some such … how drearily predictable. A bibliography would be a wonderful thing.

For I am entirely a layman on Isis. I know nothing about it. In this respect I am just like most people. Where does one get a reading list of sound sources? Just who are the good scholars?

One wouldn’t look to Wikipedia for this; indeed if it acquired such a bibliography, some troll would delete it. And indeed the Wikipedia Isis article displays the usual mixture of hearsay and low-grade sources.

My own approach would be to read whatever I can find, and tabulate the ancient Graeco-Roman literary sources. It may not be the best way; but it is impossible to avoid learning a great deal in the process.

People like yourself, who scrupulously respect the ancient sources. There is a wonderful book to be written about the cult of Mithras in the ancient world, and you are probably better placed than most other enthusiasts to write it.

Just think of the day when the Wikipedia article on Mithras gets its first citations from Pearse, R., ‘The Cult of Mithras in the Roman World’ (Oxford, 2014).

You can’t fight these trolls on Wikipedia. All you can do is produce something better, which wins general acceptance from reasonable people. So get to work …

To those listed by Michael Gilleland, I would add Isis on the Nile. Egyptian Gods in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt
Proceedings of the IVth International Conference of Isis Studies, Liège, November 27-29 2008 (Brill 2010). Judith

The only caveat, of course, would be that the book is from 1971, and so there has been further work on the subject, but for basic orientation one couldn’t do better. All the more recent books will tend to have a narrower focus.

I suspect you’re right. Orientation is precisely what I need to get, and a classical scholar who learned his trade before the poison of the 60’s began to leach away at learning and sense is precisely what one would want. I wish the book weren’t so expensive, tho.

This is more scholars than sources, but here, for what little it may be worth, is the Takács bibliography from the 2nd edition of the Encyclopedia of religion on “Isis”. I have no idea what Takács’ standing/reputation is, but it was by analogy Gordon who was assigned the comparable article on “Mithras” (though editors do sometimes have to settle for who they can enlist). If I were trying to get a quick sense for a short list of the big guns, I would take also a look at the most recent edition of the Oxford classical dictionary, Brill’s new Pauly, the Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum, and so forth (proceeding from there):

@Steve, thank you very much for the Takács bibliography. It can’t hurt, and as you say, if Gordon did the Mithras one, it must mean that Takács is a specialist in the area. I will look into these references — thank you!